Because their ignorance is multiplied by their privilege.
An excellent Winfield Myers post at The Democracy Project :
Vincible Ignorance (and a lot of Spite), discusses “…the deleterious effects on American culture and foreign policy wrought by the Boomer generation.”
I’ve long thought that many of my peers, and most particularly those who’re ten to fifteen years my senior — the immediate post-war Boomers — came to despise the world of their parents and grandparents not because they were graced by better ideas or clearer vision, but because they never had to worry about what, historically, has been the lot of mankind: eking out a living from poor soil; feeding a family with too little food; protecting their belongings from marauding armies or tribes; burying one dead child after another; taking refuge in foreign and often hostile lands; knowing personally the boot heel of authoritarian or dictatorial regimes.
Which is to say, they (we) have escaped, by the extraordinary blessings heaped upon our country, and the hard work and sacrifice of those who preceded us, what was until recently the common fate of all peoples. For this, we should first of all give thanks, every day. But we should also understand, in our marrow, that none of this resulted from the “accidents of history” to which our self-proclaimed intellectual betters so often attribute our success.
Myers’ link to a Victor Davis Hanson piece is worth following also.